Arm Care

The Dangers of Playing "More"

Our youth sports culture is trending towards specialization and increased play than ever before.   We've all heard about sore arms, leg injuries, and other injuries but the appeal of getting better and playing vs "higher level" competition still drives us to enroll our children in multiple leagues and year-round same sport clubs.

Adrian Shelley, Ephrata High School baseball coach says "playing MORE is simply that . . . it's more.  It doesn't suggest benefit. In fact, we now have statistical evidence to suggest that MORE play is dangerous which gives us more research-based rationale for our 75% rule."

The EBA prefers that our players participate in other sports, however, for those who choose to focus primarily on baseball, our organization is committed to shutting our players down during the off months and shifting their focus away from baseball-specific instruction and drills in order to focus more on performance training and conditioning the entire body.  Playing for multiple teams in multiple organizations encourages players to play even more, and can complicate the need to responsibly monitor the health and safety of the player.  Unless a comprehensive monitoring plan is coordinated between those organizations, where everyone involved is actively auditing a player's health (specifically throwing-related arm pain), then we feel that excessive play is not only unnecessary, but a significant risk.  This study substantiates our philosophy​.

For more information, here is an article that refers to the study previously mentioned.